the dark side of the moon
by saunatonttu
Summary: She is nothing but a stray dog to him, and yet he notices her. -1896. Rated K.
1. silence

**A/N: **1896 is a cherished ship of mine, and it was about time I wrote something for it. Also, in regards to my older, unfinished stories: I will either rewrite or drop them altogether because my writing style has changed, and I'm not satisfied with the stories I wrote before, so... maybe this coming summer you will see one of the stories rewritten.

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**the dark side of the moon**

_ because even the mighty fall_

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He watches her silently, indifferently.

She's just another one of Mukuro's stray dogs, he knows as he watches her leave the school area after a hefty day at Namimori Middle. But even that owner abandoned her.

Sawada's voice rings in his mind — "what are we gonna do, Reborn, she can't, she can't possibly be okay all by herself" — and Hibari snorts, breaking the silence he had created for himself in the office room.

Strays always had their ways to survive; they know nothing but abandonment and of survival — Hibari could relate, though the thought of relating to any of Mukuro's mutts made his stomach reel and skin crawl until he thought he might get rashes again.

Disgusting — Rokudo and Dokuro both.

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She's firm when it comes to helping Sawada Tsunayoshi, who is but a small animal and not even above rats when it came to hierarchy, and Hibari finds himself annoyed as he watches Chrome trying to help the dim boy with biology, a subject she's unexpectedly decent at.

He's lying beneath a sakura tree, for a bit, and the irony tastes like metal — but he won't change his spot, not because of the bitter memory of a cheap trick of not-even-Japanese sakura trees.

He listens, because he's still the prefect, and he has to make sure nothing that harms the school would come to pass.

"—do you understand now, boss?"

Her voice is meek in every way — but it's not bothersome, and Hibari finds it almost soothing.

"…Yeah, yeah, I think I do. Thanks, Chrome."

Chrome Dokuro, he thinks as he opens his steely eyes once more and glances - and sees the smile on Chrome's face as she leans to peck Tsuna's cheek.

_Revolting._

That flimsy little girl is nothing but trouble.

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She holds her trident with pride he's surprised to see — mutts aren't supposed to be so prideful, they're not supposed to have a backbone.

Yet, she clearly has one.

"Chrome Dokuro," he frowns at her, lips curling back in distaste. "You have no authority to stop me from punishing the rule breakers."

Her one visible eye stares at him with all the seriousness in the world. "They did nothing wrong," he murmurs, "Hibari-san."

It's just one moment, another harmless meeting, but something in her voice disturbs him enough to make him put his tonfas away, brows knitted with mild and ever-constant anger, before turning away.

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She, he mulls over it one day, might be more dangerous than Rokudo Mukuro.

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It's less about Mukuro, these days, and more about Dokuro herself, and that realization makes him recoil both physically and mentally because he's getting sidetracked.

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She's the moon the sun hides from view, but once the sun has set, the moon comes out, and there's a reason he likes the moon better.

The moon soothes the anger the sun ignites in him.

And the moon doesn't even know it.

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Yes, he thinks as he glares at the group where he can see Dokuro's dark violet-tinted hair, this was something people called _having a crush on someone_.

How does he destroy this feeling?


	2. aggression

A/N: So I decided to continue this - notice that these are supposed to be small drabbles, so nothing excruciatingly long is to be expected.

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**part II. **

**aggression**

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She looks at him more often now, he notices, and sometimes he thinks he sees a hint of red in that eye — wrong eye, so he must be imagining it, not to mention that Mukuro had set this mutt free some weeks, months ago.

Perhaps she has noticed how he looks at her: with scorn marring his features, lips stiff and low, eyes narrow and black as the raven that keeps flying over the Namimori Middle oh so inconspicuously.

(He sneers at it every time he sees it — but he leaves the bird be, even if the condescending cawing makes his skin itch all over.)

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Sometimes, their eyes meet.

The contact is brief, and Hibari doesn't turn his gaze away — he has never been anything like a coward, after all — but he does curl his lips and furrow his brow in disapproval, and Dokuro flinches… with apprehension radiating off from her tiny frame.

He finds himself more and more annoyed by her as the day progresses.

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Sometimes he sees her when he patrols around Namimori — the small city, not just the school, because it's his duty to punish the evil-doers of this godforsaken place — and sometimes, he stops and stares from afar, with narrow eyes and the strange curiosity prickling at the nerves in his brain like some disease.

There she goes — steps light as feather and yet as clumsy as an impaired mutt he thinks of her as — and he glares in her wake, fingers twitching as his throat constricts with something he hates to think of as an emotion.

(Yet he's the most emotional of them all — when it comes to his school, his territory — and the fiercest.)

She turns just as he has disappeared again from the view, and there's a whisper on her lips that no one hears.

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"Chrome Dokuro," he says, and Chrome's companions freeze — the girl herself, however, does not.

She looks expectant. Hopeful, even.

He purses his lips as he silently beckons for her to follow him.

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And what Hibari wants, he _gets_.


	3. acceptance

She feels Mukuro's presence in the back of her mind, and stiffens and stops reading her textbook — to wait, to make sure she actually felt that familiar shift in the back of her mind—

_Mukuro-sama,_ she calls, _what are you_—

His chuckle is soothing like cold strawberry ice cream on a hot summer day, and she almost flushes — only, she doesn't, because she is stronger now and Mukuro-sama has taught her well.

_You have him wrapped around your little finger, dear Nagi_, he murmurs soundlessly into her mind, and she doesn't need to ask who Mukuro is referring to; she knows, knows oh so well.

_Do you have anything against it?_ she asks, timidly, and twiddles with her thumbs like a clumsy child or her boss would when his nerves got the better of him.

He laughs, softly, and her whole being tingles in anticipation and—

_I trust you, Nagi_, is what he says and it's not quite approval, but it's the best she can get, and so her pale, blueberry-lip-glossed lips turn into a (fragile) happy smile.

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She's fourteen and she's not even sure how old he is — but does it matter? — and he's her second crush.

She wonders if he realizes that Mukuro-sama was her first one—

—but when she sees him from the corner of her eye, tonfas meeting someone's side with force enough to break ribs, she supposes it doesn't matter.

(She smiles at the crow resting atop one of the lampposts, and in a fit of giddiness, she gives it a thumbs-up — _I'm okay_.)

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"Chrome Dokuro."

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When he kisses her the first time, it's awkward — incredibly so — and Chrome doesn't quite know how to reciprocate the frustration that hides behind Hibari's lips, behind his teeth and in his mouth.

They call Hibari Kyouya an ice statue, but Chrome finds out that he's not like ice at all.

He's a brimstone in the making; burning, scorching hot; he leaves nothing but burns in his wake.

But it's awkward, the kiss; she giggles into his mouth, breathless and embarrassed, and Hibari growls at the sound, aggressive but sloppy.

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"You kiss like you're fighting someone," she tells him as she daringly cradles his cheeks.

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"You kiss like you're drowning," he tells her in the same heartbeat, voice accusatory.

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_You have him wrapped around your finger_, Mukuro's voice softly purrs in the back of her consciousness, a constant reminder that if Mukuro so chooses, he'll always be with her.

She had never thought it could be a burden — but now, she might.


End file.
